By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
Regular work during the current Missouri legislative session is off to a slow start as legislators deal with two key issues that must be dealt with early in the session.
State Sen. Tony Luetkemeyer of Parkville says the start of the session has been interesting, with discussions of congressional redistricting and talks of what to do with the supplemental budget upfront.
"And that's really important, because, before we get to what we consider the normal business of the legislative session, we have to tackle both of those issues because they are time sensitive," Luetkemeyer tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. "And so, this session is getting off to a bit of a slower start in the sense that we have a lot of big issues that we have to clear out of the way before we get to the normal business of the state."
Luetkemeyer says this legislative session will also deal with vaccine mandates.
Luetkemeyer says as soon as senators are done with those two issues, they will move on to normal legislative business. And Luetkemeyer says that includes what he is calling a 'vaccine bill of rights’.
"There are future mandates that may come down, my guess is that we probably will pass, or at least attempt to pass some type of vaccine bill of rights that would give people the choice to decide whether or not the vaccine was the best decision for them," Luetkemeyer says.
Luetkemeyer says those bills come after what he calls a victory by the Supreme Court shooting down President Bidens vaccine mandate for businesses of over 100 people.
Luetkemeyer says with the delay as senators deal with congressional redistricting and the supplemental budget, it almost feels like legislators have lost a good amount of time to make decisions.
"In a way, it's almost like we're going to lose a month of session, because rather than having the full four months, we're going to have closer to three months to get all the rest of the state's business done, because we're going to be focused on congressional redistricting and the supplemental budget to start with," Luetkemeyer explains.
Luetkemeyer says it's important to start with these two issues because they are time sensitive. Congressional redistricting needs to be decided by February and the supplemental budget needs to be decided by the end of March.
*Brent Martin contributed to this story